ROM: SPACEKNIGHT - victim of dire wraith plot?

murder the counting crows

let me count the ways:

1. this guy: should be reason enough. even if you are somehow able to enjoy their music, you have to admit that this guy is an ass.
2. toothless: he sings like he has dough in his mouth about things that don't matter to anyone that has matured past the age of 22.
3. sleep-inducing: if they didn't inspire so much hatred in me, they'd put me to sleep, which would be infinitely preferable to hearing his caterwauling.
4. the lyrics: people seem to think that they actually mean something. they don't.
5. pernicious influence: at least partially responsible for the rise of dave matthews, who also sucks.
6. their fans: if you defend counting crows, then you suck too by association.
7. their music: i would feel better about it if i knew it was just a cynical ploy on their part to bilk angsty 20-somethings, but they seem to actually want to make this crap.
they can make any kind of music that they want and they choose to make this?
their guitar player is a former student of joe satriani (along with vai and the guy from primus). what a waste.
8: they don't rock: not even a little. they sound as though they are incapable of rocking.
9. sounds like he wants to kill himself: but doesn't have the balls to do it.

the prosaic 4 II: the silver surfer vs. a boatload of ham-handed "jokes"

there's a cameo in fantastic 4 II where stan lee is told that he is not on the guest list to the wedding and it is a great metaphor for hollywood film versions of classic comic books.

for some reason the producers of these bloated merchandising tools feel the need to bypass the authors who wrote the books in the first place and replace them with someone who inevitably feels the need to change everything that made the book a classic in the first place. all this does is alienate the original fans and makes the uninitiated wonder what the big deal was in the first place. everyone loses.

look at the comic book movies that work; they don't stray too far from the source material and they seem to have been written by someone who knows and understands the characters.

no one that can change this process will probably ever read this, but i still must say, if only to maintain my own fragile sanity, LEAVE THE CHARACTERS ALONE. using a tachyon pulse to separate the silver surfer from his board because it is actually the source of his power? where is this crap coming from? the dude is infused with the power cosmic! he eats tachyons for breakfast and doesn't need his board to do it.

it is actually in your best interest not to mess with the original too much. why do you think the spiderman movies did so well? because they didn't change the character! (and they had raimi) those movies seem to have been written by someone that actually read spiderman and liked it instead of by some hack who just takes the characters and shoehorns them into what is little more than an overblown taco bell marketing scheme. they got rid of spidey's web-shooters, sure, but they didn't change any of the central, important things about the character.

here's an idea, put in one less explosion and buy yourself a decent script, because if the script sucks you're doomed from day one.

btw, the plot arc of FF4II is that invisible girl finally realizes that the possible annihilation of the entire earth is slightly more important than her own stupid wedding. she whines and complains about not being "normal" while the thing, who doesn't have the option of even appearing normal, drinks beer out of a pitcher. she worries about raising a child in this "environment." if by "this environment" she means crappy movies, then i agree. of course, if you know anything about how her son turns out, the evironment should be the least of her worries. the only funny part of the movie is when she dies and the only sad part is when they bring her back.

here's an alternative, if you're going to change one thing, then you might as well change everything.

comic fans: you must stop paying to see these movies. if they do even moderately well, then we're sending the wrong message. in my own defense, i watched a copy of FF4II that i checked out of the library, which also explains why this rant comes a year late. still, this an ongoing penomenon. for example, ghost rider vs. sin city.

funny games

it's "a clockwork orange" meets "rope" if they didn't get caught at the end.

don't know what this says about me, but ho-hum.

uh-oh ohio

"A law may be thought ill-advised, paternalistic and generally obnoxious and still not be unconstitutional," he wrote.

perhaps it's time for a constitutional amendment forbidding ill-advised, paternalistic and generally obnoxious laws?

new hard drive for 2008

i finally got the nerve to put a new hard drive in my laptop last week. everyone eventually runs out of space, right? i've been adding hard drives to my home computer for years now - it's up to 5 drives by now, but putting a new drive in a laptop is a different beast because most laptops can only have one internal drive at a time.

in the end, it was a lot easier than i thought it would be and it's nice to be able to keep the original drive as a backup. here's how i did it:

first, buy these things:

1. enermax jazz external 2.5'' SATA hard drive enclosure = $30



2. western digital 2.5'' 160 GB, 5400 RPM hard drive = $140

put the new drive into the enclosure as per the instructions.

plug it in it to a USB port.

western digital provides a cool free program called DATA LIFEGUARD TOOLS. download it. and then install it.

when you run the LIFEGUARD TOOLS it should recognize your new drive connected to the USB.

format the new drive.

now, there's an option in the LIFEGUARD TOOLS to "copy partition." use it to copy your entire old hard drive onto the new one. this will put necessary startup files on the new drive.

finally, unplug your laptop and remove the battery. take your new drive out of its enclosure and put it in your laptop and then transfer your old drive from your laptop into the now empty enclosure.

once you plug your laptop back in, it should start up as normal and you can use your old drive as an external drive or keep it as a backup.

what a difference a comma makes

if that is your wish, dr. cosby.

the first step on the "path from victim to victor" may be hiring a cover designer who knows something about punctuation, specifically the comma of direct address.

all of a sudden that song "come on eileen" just took on a whole new meaning.